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On False Recollection (“déjà raconté”) during Psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud.
The Attitude of the Psychoanalytic Therapeutist to the Actual Conflicts. Prof. Ernest Jones, London.
Some Clinical Observations on Paranoia and Paraphrenia. (A Contribution to the Psychology of “System-Formation.”) Dr. S. Ferenczi (Budapest).
Prof. Dr. Ernst Dürr and his Relation to Psychoanalysis. DR. O. PFISTER, clergyman in Zurich.
On False Recollection (“déjà raconté”) during Psychoanalysis.—Often, during an analysis, the patient remembers and tells something, and says, “but that I have already told you.” The doctor, however, may have no memory of it and if he says so the patient is
vehement in his protestations of certainty. Both may be equally certain, but obviously there is no objective value to the feeling of certainty. The doctor may be as mistaken as the patient.
In a number of cases one may finally remember having heard the matter before, but in the majority of cases it is the patient who is mistaken. The explanation of this frequent fact seems to be that the patient had the intention of telling, and had even prepared the way and begun to tell, but was prevented by his resistance and finally misplaced the fact for the intention and remembered it as if accomplished. This material is of the greatest value for the analysis.
Grosset, in 1904, explained the phenomenon “déjà vu” as an unconscious perception later brought to consciousness by a similar impression. Freud, without knowing about Grosset's work, gave a similar explanation in the second edition of his “Psychopathology of Everyday Life,” published in 1907.